The Bingo Queens of Oneida

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How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin

Mike Hoeft

Learn the inspiring story of two women's innovative solution to help revive the Oneida Nation's economy and strengthen their community.

216 pages, 6 x 9, 34 b&w photos
Paperback: $19.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-652-8
Ebook: $12.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-653-5
Publication Date: 4/22/2014

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Front cover of The Bingo Queens of Oneida

Description

Before Indian casinos, a few enterprising tribes got their start in gambling by opening bingo parlors. A group of women on the Oneida Indian Reservation just outside Green Bay, Wisconsin, introduced bingo in 1976 simply to pay a few bills. Bingo not only paid the light bill at the struggling civic center but was soon financing vital health and housing services for tribal elderly and poor.

The Bingo Queens of Oneida tells the story through the eyes of Sandra Ninham and Alma Webster, the Oneida women who had the idea for a bingo operation run by the Oneida Nation. Bingo became the first successful moneymaker on a reservation where about half the population was living in poverty.

Author Mike Hoeft traces the historic struggles of the Oneida people—from their alliance with America during the Revolutionary War to their journey to Wisconsin—and details the lives of inspirational Oneida citizens who worked alongside Ninham and Webster. The Bingo Queens of Oneida is the story not only of how one game helped revive the Oneida economy but also of how one game strengthened the Oneida community.

Author Bio

Mike Hoeft is a paralegal for Oneida Nation Family Services. Prior to that, he spent thirty years writing and editing for newspapers, twenty-three of them on staff in the newsroom of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico. Hoeft lives with his family in Oneida, Wisconsin.

'The Bingo Queens of Oneida' is much more than a study of how gaming came about in one Native American community in the 1970s. Mike Hoeft has written a beautiful portrait of contemporary Wisconsin Oneida Indian life and its vitality. It is a tribute to the women of the Oneidas—particularly the lives of two determined Oneida women, Alma Webster and Sandy (Ninham) Brehmer—who helped lead the cultural, economic, and political resurgence in this Wisconsin community over the past four decades.

Laurence M. Hauptman

SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and coeditor of “A Nation within a Nation: Voices of the Oneidas in Wisconsin”

“The hand that rocked the cradle found a new weapon in the war on poverty. This is the story of strong American Indian women who helped rebuild a great Indian nation. The Oneida bingo moms inspired me!”
—Melanie Benjamin, chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and cofounder of Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations